How do you justify rebellion when you are fighting for freedom, and then justify suppressing it once freedom is yours?

In this episode of This, Again, we rewind to the years immediately after American independence, when the Founding Fathers were forced to confront a problem they had not fully planned for. Americans were rebelling again, this time against them.

We begin with the Boston Tea Party before it became a founding myth, when it was still risky, debated, and unresolved. Then we follow that same logic of resistance as it reappears during the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, when farmers in western Pennsylvania challenged a federal law passed by a government that claimed to represent them.

Along the way, we sit with the anxiety, fear, and reasoning that shaped how early American leaders explained the difference between rebellion they celebrated and rebellion they suppressed. This is not an episode about whether the Founders were right or wrong. It is about how people reason under pressure, how legitimacy hardens after survival, and how the logic that creates a revolution does not disappear once power changes hands.

Primary sources from Alexander Hamilton and George Washington anchor the episode, alongside historians who explore the psychological and political aftermath of the American Revolution.

Attribution Notes:

• Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow.
• If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow

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This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust.

Hamilton, Alexander. Federalist No. 15. 1787. Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed15.asp

Hamilton, Alexander. Federalist No. 6. 1787. Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed06.asp

Hamilton, Alexander. Federalist No. 9. 1787. Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed09.asp

Hamilton, Alexander. Letter to George Washington, August 18, 1794. In The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 17. Edited by Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.

Hamilton, Alexander. “Tully No. IV.” 1794. In The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 25. Edited by Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.

Washington, George. Proclamation Calling Out the Militia. September 25, 1794. Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/gw02.asp

Petition of the Inhabitants of Washington County, Pennsylvania. 1792. Quoted in Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution.

Secondary Sources

Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Bouton, Terry. Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

Wood, Gordon S. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789 to 1815. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765 to 1776. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1972.

Archival Collections

Avalon Project, Yale Law School. Founding era documents, Federalist Papers, and presidential proclamations. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/

National Archives. Early American government records and founding documents. https://www.archives.gov/

Petition of the Inhabitants of Washington County, Pennsylvania, 1792, quoted in Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Hamilton, Alexander. Letter to George Washington, August 18, 1794. In The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 17, edited by Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.

Hamilton, Alexander. “Tully No. IV,” 1794. In The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 25, edited by Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.